Prep Football: Bulldogs determined to give it their all against Eagles

Kingman will depend on its offensive line to open holes Friday night against Pinon. The Bulldogs rushed for three touchdowns in last year’s season-opening win over Joy Christian. (Photo by Beau Bearden/Daily Miner)

KINGMAN – A football season is very similar to riding a roller coaster, as athletes experience a number of unexpected highs and lows.

Kingman High School football coach Cam Wierson is well aware of that fact as the Bulldogs prepare to start their 2018 campaign Friday night.

“Right now we’re experiencing the ‘clack-clack-clack’ of climbing before that long-awaited plunge,” Wierson said. “Winning would obviously be awesome. But we’re going to focus on playing as hard as we can from start to finish. We’ll ignore the scoreboard, and simply focus on our effort level.”

Kingman gets its first opportunity to experience the joys of the roller coaster experience when Pinon comes to town for a 7 p.m. contest.

The Eagles didn’t win a game last season and struggled mightily on offense – scoring an average of 8.2 points per game, while yielding a mammoth 55.2 points per contest.

That fact could go in favor of the Bulldogs, but Pinon has a new coach and that has resulted in Wierson and his staff finding little information on their opponent.

“Coaching doesn’t have a lot of impact on football games during the contest,” Wierson said. “But in this one, since there’s a ton of unknown on both sides, victory will very likely be had by the team whose staff does a better job making adjustments and coaching our kids as the game goes along.”

The Bulldogs will be looking to win their second consecutive season-opener after dispatching Joy Christian 26-6 last year.

Kingman will have a new signal caller leading the offense in Austin Dias.

As a sophomore, Dias racked up 717 yards rushing and a team-high six touchdowns. The rest of the offensive skill positions, however, are up for grabs.

“Everything else is still fairly fluid,” Wierson said. “We have a couple positions we plan to rotate guys at and develop our depth chart based on performance.”

On a side note, Wierson knows that there is a possibility that the Eagles are using their winless season as motivation entering this year.

But the third-year Bulldogs head coach is keeping his concentration on his team.

“Arguably, a football coach’s No. 1 job is to motivate men to accomplish difficult tasks and challenges,” Wierson said. “As someone attempting to motivate a group to get over that zero-win season myself, I’m more focused on the kids playing the game to the best of their ability than anything.”